


A Simple Goodbye

by Pretty_Kitty_Nya



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Character Death, major character death is not explicitly talked about but is heavily implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24102172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pretty_Kitty_Nya/pseuds/Pretty_Kitty_Nya
Summary: The rush of the ER is just as terrifying and adrenaline-pumping as it was the first day I stepped foot inside as a brand-new resident of the hospital. The streams of people crowd me in as I struggle to breathe through the panic saturating the air. The lights of the ambulances vie for attention as they bathe the room in vivid flashes of unsettling red.





	A Simple Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever fanfic on ao3 so please be gentle.  
> If you see anything that you believe needs a tag, please feel free to let me know and I'll add it accordingly. <3

The rush of the ER is just as terrifying and adrenaline-pumping as it was the first day I stepped foot inside as a brand-new resident of the hospital. The streams of people crowd me in as I struggle to breathe through the panic saturating the air. The lights of the ambulances vie for attention as they bathe the room in vivid flashes of unsettling red. The blaring horns from outside mix with the shouting and machinery racket forming a wall of noise that is impossible to tune out. Stretchers carrying critical patients are rolled in as paramedics relay information to awaiting doctors. The state of the victims explains the magnitude of the accident better than any witness could hope to convey.

I redirect my attention to the patient in front of me and to where my hands keep pressure on the tear in their stomach. The blood loss is reaching dangerous levels and I fear too much time has passed to save them. I bite my lip to keep from yelling at the others to move faster; rushing won’t help the patient and could possibly cause more harm. I pray that the shaky movements under my palms are breaths and not a result of my hands trembling. I cannot afford to lose my composure with a life on the line.

My heart drops when the monitor flatlines but there’s nothing more I can do. I slowly lift my hands from the patient’s stomach and stare resolutely into their face for the first time. I watch numbly as Bettie moves to cover the patient with a sheet. I have enough presence of mind to whisper “may your spirit find rest in the peaceful plains beyond” before the face is completely covered. I receive a few inquisitive looks from the newer hires, but I ignore them in favor of removing the bloody gloves from my hands. I pretend to not notice the recognition in Bettie’s eyes as I leave the room.

I briskly walk down the hall back to the ER where patients are still being brought in. The smell of blood and death is overwhelming and makes my stomach turn as I breath shallowly with my mouth. I pull on a fresh pair of gloves and glance at nearby charts hoping for a distraction to drown out the face of the patient I just lost. Within a few minutes I’m helping move another patient into the surgery room and the process begins again.

~~~~~

May your spirit find rest in the peaceful plains beyond. It’s been only seventeen years since I first heard that spoken as a fresh-faced resident just out of med school, but it feels like an eternity. At the beginning of our residency, Bettie and I were both assigned under Dr. Ashlee Mcdaniel at the Spring River Medical Center in Aylesbury, Nevada.

Ashlee Mcdaniel was the warmest person I have ever met with laugh lines around her mouth and her graying hair always pulled back in a braid. She was also the best cardiothoracic surgeon in the state and was confident enough to let her skills speak for themselves in the operating room. Ashlee was always the last to give up hope on patients and the first to break bad news to families. I always believed that Ashlee had too much empathy for a surgeon when death was always a possibility for patients.

It took several years to figure out that Ashlee’s warm and empathetic nature masked a lifetime of loss and grief.

~~~~~

My hands are calm as I tie the last knot of the stitches. The patient had entered the hospital with a mangled arm and a few gashes in the side; the arm was unsalvageable, but the gashes were shallower than anticipated and easily tied shut. With the gashes patched up and the useless arm removed, the patient was cleared to be moved to another room to rest. I breathe a sigh of relief and thank all the other doctors for their help in the successful operation.

I assign a resident to monitor the patient for any major changes and instruct them to contact a nurse or an on-duty doctor in case of emergencies. The resident carefully leaves following the patient’s gurney as it’s rolled down the hallway, a watchful eye glancing periodically at the monitors as they skim the files in their hands. I have to stop myself from following to double check the heart monitor for a third time. The patient is no longer my responsibility, but that doesn’t stop my heart from seizing in fear when I can no longer hear the beeping of the monitor.

My colleagues all congratulate me on a job well done and wearily make their way out of the crowded room. Soon I’m left in the room with Bettie and a few nurses who begin to help clean up the room. Before I can offer to help with cleanup, Bettie grabs my arm and pulls me into a nearby hallway where she shoves a granola bar into my hand. I didn’t have time to think about eating with the flood of patients still being brought in and I’m startled by how hungry I am once I begin to eat something.

I’ve been on my feet for the past eight hours moving from patient to patient without a break, occasionally drinking water when a cup was forced into my hand. Accidents with casualties this high require all available hands on deck. With the ER steadily unclogging, I finally have a moment to breathe as my legs tremble beneath my weight and my eyes droop from exhaustion. I carefully slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor. Bettie makes a face at the dirty tiles but decides to sit down as well, grumbling a little under her breath.

I don’t miss the way Bettie’s eyes glance over me in concern. I’ve known her for too long at this point to not notice the way she pinches her lips to bury the questions brimming at the back of her throat. I reach out and squeeze her hand in reassurance before moving to stand up again. I’m halted by Bettie’s hand on my knee and a quiet “rest for a minute” as she stares at me pleadingly.

After a few minutes of sitting on the floor my legs feel steadier and Bettie doesn’t stop me from standing up again. I start to head down the hallway before I glance back at Bettie whose brow is scrunched up in worry. A silent promise to talk later curls my lips into a tired smile as I wave at Bettie. Slowly I turn and head towards my next patient of the evening. I quietly grieve for the three patients I lost today as the tile floors echo my footsteps.

~~~~~

The first time I watched a patient die on the operating table is a moment that haunts me to this day. I was scrubbing in on a routine appendectomy to remove a patient’s inflamed appendix when the patient’s heart failed during the surgery. The other doctors were unable to restart the heart and the patient, named Darrel Poikwell, was declared dead. The body was carefully covered with a sheet and wheeled out of the room for death preparations. I was still standing in the somber room as Dr. Finley left to inform the Poikwell family of their loss and the others in the room began to restore the room to order. Unable to stand the deafening silence of the room, I left and returned to my station helping sort records for the nurses. The echoes of the heart monitor ringing in my ears for the rest of the day.

I remember going to Ashlee the next day when I couldn’t stop thinking about Darrel Poikwell’s untimely death, shaken and pale under the fluorescent lights of the hospital. Ashlee stared at me for a long moment and told me, “Death is the part of our jobs that we prepare for but aren’t ever ready to face.”

A disheartening statement to be told by the person you look to for guidance, but it was something I needed to hear whether I wanted to or not.

~~~~~

The last patient waiting in the ER has a few broken bones while covered in bruises and the occasional patch of bloody skin. While my specialty is in surgery, I go ahead and start cleaning the new scabs forming while the patient waits for a radiographer to take x-rays of the broken bones. When the cuts are clean and bandaged, the patient is wheeled away to be x-rayed and I glance at the clock hanging on the nearby wall. I’m not surprised to find that it’s almost four thirty in the morning.

I check in with a few of the other surgeons finishing up final surgeries before Bettie gently grabs my arm and guides me outside. The air outside is shockingly crisp and full of life compared to the stagnant air from inside the hospital and I stand still for a moment to breathe in the quiet calm that has settled in the night. While I love my job, the smell of antiseptic reminds me too much of how much loss I witness on a daily basis. Bettie tuts at me for taking too long as she unlocks her car parked on the far side of the parking lot.

I trudge through the gravel towards the passenger door and slip into the warm interior of the car. I carefully buckle my seatbelt before resting my head against the cold glass window, my eyes falling shut at the calming familiarity of it. I fall asleep to the sound of gravel crunching under the tires and the old radio crackling as it croons an unknown song.

~~~~~

May your spirit find rest in the peaceful plains beyond. Ashlee always said those words over patients who had just passed away, staring at their faces as if she could memorize every last detail with just a short look. There was always something I couldn’t read in her eyes as she said those words, as if there was something she saw that I couldn’t begin to comprehend.

I often asked her what she meant, but I always received an answer along the lines of “I’ll tell you one day, just not today.” It wasn’t until my final days as a resident that she told me the truth behind those words that she always whispered over the recently departed. In lieu of her usual cheeky response to my questions, Ashlee instead gently grabbed my arm and steered me towards a deserted hallway.

In that hallway I endured Ashlee’s searching stare for what felt like hours, but truthfully must have been only a few minutes. She seemed to decide I was ready enough to hear the answer to my searching questions. Ashlee then told me, “I don’t know for certain what comes after life here, but I do know with certainty that there is some kind of peace to be found. When a patient passes away under our care, I pray for them to find peace away from the pain that tormented them in life.”

I still didn’t fully understand what she was trying to tell me, but everything she said to me seemed to be teeming with hidden messages I struggled to comprehend. It wasn’t until much later that I realized it was her own way of letting people go.

~~~~~

The day I fully understood what Ashlee meant when whispering “may your spirit find rest in the peaceful plains beyond” was the day I was awoken to the panicked hospital call of “Rebecca! I mean Dr. Turner! Oh, whatever it is, Ashlee’s been in an accident!”

The drive to the hospital was excruciating, Bettie careful to drive the speed limit while I wondered if Ashlee would still be alright by the time we arrived. Walking into the hospital room and seeing Ashlee pale as the sheets on the bed was the worst thing I had ever seen. I still wonder to this day why I was Ashlee’s first emergency contact when she was so close to her sister Lydia Hulle.

The doctor working that day informed me that Ashlee had fallen down a flight of stairs which caused severe damage to her brain and her other organs. There was no possible way to fully assess the damages without fixing the weakness in her heart. I was asked to sign the papers consenting to the surgery and with no other hope of saving Ashlee, I picked up the pen and wrote my signature along the dotted line.

It broke my heart watching through the glass as Ashlee’s heart gave out, the monitors flashing while the doctors tried to save her. I let the tears burning my eyes roll down my cheeks as I realized I’d have to let Ashlee go forever. The last thing I said to Ashlee before they covered her with the sheet was “may your spirit find rest in the peaceful plains beyond” which is the closest thing to goodbye I’ve ever said.


End file.
